The Secret of Saving For Retirement for Freelancers

The 200kfreelancer’s latest post on the AARP’s Work Reimagined site is live. The post includes five tips for keeping your retirement savings on track when you are self-employed.

Among them: Take advantage of the tax breaks for saving through a SEP-IRA. In your good years, it’s smart to put as much as you can into a fund (the maximum for a SEP is high, at $51,000 in 2013). As a self-employed person, you may have some years when you can’t invest at all.

Invest wisely. Research shows passive investments like index funds and low-cost ETFs return more. And keep the fees down — they can slice into your retirement pie more than you realize.

The ups and downs of self-employment or entrepreneurship mean “it’s easy to not save anything at all,” says John Salter, associate professor in personal financial planning at Texas Tech University. Looking for creative ways to take value out of your business when it’s time to retire is one strategy.

Here’s a link to the post: http://workreimagined.aarp.org/2013/01/the-secret-of-saving-for-retirement/